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Re: [Drop Dead Studios] Spheres of Might Open Playtest
Our group is all, 'Spheres of Power' and the associated handbooks, as far as casting goes. And then Path of War or Ultimate Psionics for the martial types. Three of the five players (plus myself) have given me money for the Might hardcover pledges, so we'll have four copies of that book in our gaming room when it arrives.
There's nothing wrong with the Paizo options, and we have at least a copy of every book Paizo has published, but we're not actively playing the Paizo classes. Well, we are in the sense that we dip one level into monk for an unarmored combatant who is otherwise entirely Path of War or we are using (Sphere) archetypes for many of the Paizo caster types.
The current group is:
Dwarf Shifter
Half-Elf Monk/Stalker/Dragon Fury
Half-Orc Aegis/Stalker/Dragon Fury
Dwarf Incanter
Half-Elf Aegis/Soulknife/Stalker
Human Fey Adept/(Sp)Wizard
The group is pretty much going with Spheres of Power is the default magic system (aside from Ultimate Psionics classes), and is there is a sphere archetype for a caster type taking the archetype is mandatory. If there isn't a sphere version of a casting class, then that class isn't available any more.
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Re: [Drop Dead Studios] Spheres of Might Open Playtest
I haven't gotten a chance to read through all of the spheres in detail, but what I've read so far is all pretty cool. The fact that Spheres of Might sticks more to mundane combat as opposed to the more supernatural combat styles of Path of War is a double-edged sword for me- on one hand, I like how the Spheres are clearly designed not to resemble or function like magic, but on the other hand, it left me craving some of the more over-the-top nonsense one can pull off in Path of War, like walking on air or ricocheting arrows off of enemies.
Some specific questions/comments:
- RAW, it looks to me like the Sentinel's Second Wind ability can be used to recover martial focus even when above half health. Was that intentional?
- Is there any concern that, between being able to substitute their level for BAB and getting three talents for a single scholar's knack, the Scholar might outclass some other classes at what their actual specialties are? I haven't run the math on this, but it seems to me that they could easily eclipse the Commander as a Warleader with proper talent allocation.
- This might just be me, but the Technician's description is kind of a mess. It's overlong and badly in need of organization, especially in regards to insights, which aren't explained very well and are kinda haphazardly strewed through the text. Maybe give it its own doc? It takes up over half of Classes 2 all by itself.
Overall though, very nice! Keep up the good work, guys!
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Re: [Drop Dead Studios] Spheres of Might Open Playtest
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Originally Posted by
ElFi
I haven't gotten a chance to read through all of the spheres in detail, but what I've read so far is all pretty cool. The fact that Spheres of Might sticks more to mundane combat as opposed to the more supernatural combat styles of Path of War is a double-edged sword for me- on one hand, I like how the Spheres are clearly designed not to resemble or function like magic, but on the other hand, it left me craving some of the more over-the-top nonsense one can pull off in Path of War, like walking on air or ricocheting arrows off of enemies.
Have you given Legendary Talents a look? That's where the over the top powers are.
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Re: [Drop Dead Studios] Spheres of Might Open Playtest
Out of curiousity, how long after the PDF version is done will the physical copies ship out?
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Re: [Drop Dead Studios] Spheres of Might Open Playtest
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Originally Posted by
digiman619
Out of curiousity, how long after the PDF version is done will the physical copies ship out?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
EldritchWeaver
SoM needs to be published first in PDF form. Then I expect some time during which additional errata will be integrated. Then a print would be possible. So maybe 2 months after publishing.
Gish book may need still some playtesting. Or at least the gish classes should be combined into a single set for playtest purposes. The prodigy is at least in playtest mode. So any print edition is way off.
There you go.
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Re: [Drop Dead Studios] Spheres of Might Open Playtest
Hm. Hm.
I do like Spheres of Power, and I like Path of War, and I do like that there are some things that Spheres of Might seems to be doing that Path of War does not.
Hm.
So far, I could see potential in using Spheres of Might in a gestalt game to maybe round out a Path of War character, there are some spheres that PoW does not cover like all the Scoundrel sphere stuff. yes I know about the Legendary Talents, they are included in this.
I could definitely see Spheres of Might working on some level ground with Spheres of Power though. I think. I'm not the best analyzer, admittedly. but I guess to answer that i must ask: what does Spheres of Might do that a normal fighter or rogue doesn't?
for one thing, it has more variety. These classes feel like a good range of what these kinds of characters should be able to do outside of PoW kind of stuff. we have Blacksmiths, Scholars, Commanders, Technicians, Troubadours, in addition to the more combat related classes that are focused on those, and even then there are variations between Armiger, Conscript, Sentinel and Striker. this is the true strength of this, the variety of archetypes you seem to be covering, where PoW while I like, is weak in that it covers less variety for a better focus in comparison.
So I don't know how strong it is, I can tell it is a step up simply for putting thought into how varied these concepts can be, how much abilities they can have and just being detailed about it, whereas the normal fighter and rogue classes they always felt vague. the fact that you include Legendary Talents on top of this, thus giving even more flexibility to this, is good as well, since it provides some guideline for people to create their own crazy stunts if they want that from Spheres of Might. I'd personally take a PoW class for the crazy stunts and combat power, gestalt it with one of the non-combat focused Spheres of Might clases here for out of combat variety and I think that would turn out pretty well.
So I don't know if I'm right, but something is telling me that Spheres of Might is about the same level as Spheres of Power, maybe not exactly, but I can see it working is what I want to point out. though to be honest that might be more Spheres of Power being nowhere near as powerful as normal wizard than anything else. overall, I think this is good and I can see using it for some things.
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Re: [Drop Dead Studios] Spheres of Might Open Playtest
The biggest thing that PoW has that Spheres of Might doesn't seem like it'd be very capable of doing is having supernatural fighting styles. Simply casting a sphere-casting spell at the same time as using an attack doesn't really seem as interesting as the supernatural initiator disciplines.
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Re: [Drop Dead Studios] Spheres of Might Open Playtest
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Originally Posted by
RedMop
There you go.
Thanks, I really ought to have checked earlier in the thread.
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Re: [Drop Dead Studios] Spheres of Might Open Playtest
Quote:
Originally Posted by
ElFi
I haven't gotten a chance to read through all of the spheres in detail, but what I've read so far is all pretty cool. The fact that Spheres of Might sticks more to mundane combat as opposed to the more supernatural combat styles of Path of War is a double-edged sword for me- on one hand, I like how the Spheres are clearly designed not to resemble or function like magic, but on the other hand, it left me craving some of the more over-the-top nonsense one can pull off in Path of War, like walking on air or ricocheting arrows off of enemies.
Some specific questions/comments:
- RAW, it looks to me like the Sentinel's Second Wind ability can be used to recover martial focus even when above half health. Was that intentional?
- Is there any concern that, between being able to substitute their level for BAB and getting three talents for a single scholar's knack, the Scholar might outclass some other classes at what their actual specialties are? I haven't run the math on this, but it seems to me that they could easily eclipse the Commander as a Warleader with proper talent allocation.
- This might just be me, but the Technician's description is kind of a mess. It's overlong and badly in need of organization, especially in regards to insights, which aren't explained very well and are kinda haphazardly strewed through the text. Maybe give it its own doc? It takes up over half of Classes 2 all by itself.
Overall though, very nice! Keep up the good work, guys!
I can only answer for the sentinel question, but yeah, that was intentional. If you want to burn a swift and a reserve point to get back your focus, more power to you!
Super glad to see this release, I'm gonna be doing a dev post about it once it's out on Paizo.
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Re: [Drop Dead Studios] Spheres of Might Open Playtest
Spheres of Might has been released.
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Re: [Drop Dead Studios] Spheres of Might Open Playtest
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Milo v3
The biggest thing that PoW has that Spheres of Might doesn't seem like it'd be very capable of doing is having supernatural fighting styles. Simply casting a sphere-casting spell at the same time as using an attack doesn't really seem as interesting as the supernatural initiator disciplines.
Yes thats definitely where PoW is stronger, much better at forming a coherent style and things that combine together to work as a supernatural martial art, fighting technique wise Spheres of Might seems more of a free "learn whatever technique works for you" thing, like you can use Legendary Talents to learn individual cool one-off techniques, but not entire fighting styles, which is why I'd put Spheres of Might as a utility thing to compliment a PoW gestalt set up, because you can select a PoW class, focus on a solid fighting style to get you strong, then your second class you gestalted with is something for utility like the Blacksmith or something to get good at some other role than combat and maybe include a couple one-off Legendary Talents to help your PoW discipline with some techniques that just do something different. Like just PoW class/Conscript Gestalt alone just allows for so many possibilities, simply because of the great amounts of talents and bonus feats that it provides. add things like the Scholar, the Blacksmith, the Troubadour and you got a lot of potential.
Sure there is the Sage class for supernatural martial arts, but its like the most DBZ class there is. I like DBZ yes, but all of its techniques are basically energy hammers. though I do see some Fist of the North Star in the Sage, and it does try to form some kind of coherent style with its style talent. which I like, I'm not against it, could be useful if someone is against PoW but likes Spheres of Might for whatever reason, or if I can see some way of using the spheres to do a style that isn't in Path of War, and to be fair, the Path of War disciplines are kind of specific. I'm serious, the Sage class is more DBZ than anything in Path of War. not in power, but in method. Ok, Mystic with the Aurora Soul archetype is close, but it can't do anything so specific as make a Destructo-Disc. like in Path of War, even the more supernatural styles feel more like doing tricks that cause varied things to happen, Sage is just straight up going super-saiyan and firing kamehamehas and hadokens. it can do some things other than that to be fair, but they're pretty DBZ-like stuff. which fits Spheres of Might in general, because DBZ shares the same ideas SoM has on techniques being learnable without needing styles behind them. its still doing something different than PoW, even if they're in the same avenue, so could be a good class for like portraying a pure ki user who focuses on the fundamentals of it rather than doing some specific style like Shattered Mirror or Riven Hourglass, and could be good for portraying a gestalt where someone who both trains in the more esoteric specific styles of PoW and the more fundamental universal stuff from the Sage. The Sage even has ki healing abilities, so thats even a good utility thing right there, its still serving utility role.
Its not Path of War, but thats okay, we already have path of war, what we need is something different, and Spheres of Might I think is going in the right direction for that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
EldritchWeaver
Spheres of Might has been released.
Ah frell, really? I was just commenting this because I was bored, now I'm thinking of getting it cause its so good.
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Re: [Drop Dead Studios] Spheres of Might Open Playtest
Quote:
Originally Posted by
EldritchWeaver
Spheres of Might has been released.
Awesome! I was watching with excitement for just that news!
Now when will the updated playtest documents for the sphere hybrids come out? :smallwink:
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Re: [Drop Dead Studios] Spheres of Might Open Playtest
Reading the full product is really cool. I didn't see Mad Scientist till now. I was just about to make a Vizier//Wizard for a campaign my group is about to run as an ethically dubious Mad Scientist manapunk crafter with Iron-Man Armour, but Vizier//Mad Scientist [Technican] will work amazingly and be ridiculously better balanced.
edit: With the permanent gadgets improvement, is "3 uses" meant to be "3 uses per day"?
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Re: [Drop Dead Studios] Spheres of Might Open Playtest
Yeah, I didn't know Mad Scientist was there either, I'll have to keep that one in mind, as well as the Technician in general, Spheres of Might might just be my go to source for the inventor concepts and guys who use gear rather than martial arts.
that and I just remember: Barroom sphere! more PoW gestalt utility: Drunken Master style with any discipline.
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Re: [Drop Dead Studios] Spheres of Might Open Playtest
Where do we submit issues?
Piranha Strike is missing the bold prereq and benefit.
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Re: [Drop Dead Studios] Spheres of Might Open Playtest
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Originally Posted by
RedMop
Where do we submit issues?
Piranha Strike is missing the bold prereq and benefit.
I'd suggest to create a topic for this on the DSS forum: http://www.dropdeadstudios.com/forum...eres-of-might/
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Re: [Drop Dead Studios] Spheres of Might Open Playtest
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Originally Posted by
EldritchWeaver
I'd suggest to create a topic for this on the DSS forum:
I have went ahead and created the Spheres of Might - Formatting, Grammar, and Punctuation Errors thread.
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Re: [Drop Dead Studios] Spheres of Might Open Playtest
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Originally Posted by
EldritchWeaver
Awesome. I didn't want to get any work done today anyway. ;)
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Re: [Drop Dead Studios] Spheres of Might Open Playtest
Wow lot of significant changes from playtest to published. Jump Dragoon as an actual thing is pretty much gone or at least getting any combat benefit from it is gone. EDIT - After comments from designers hoping this gets fixed so will withhold judgement.
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Re: [Drop Dead Studios] Spheres of Might Open Playtest
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Originally Posted by
calyst
Wow lot of significant changes from playtest to published. Jump Dragoon as an actual thing is pretty much gone or at least getting any combat benefit from it is gone. Kinda makes me regret backing the kickstarter as that was the main reason I backed it.
I know there were some issues in the damage math of some of the jump attack mechanics that needed some limiters on them, but my understanding was that the functions themselves were being kept. I've bumped the team members who were working on those options so they can come in and talk about them.
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Re: [Drop Dead Studios] Spheres of Might Open Playtest
The Legendary Lunges are gone. :smallfrown:
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Re: [Drop Dead Studios] Spheres of Might Open Playtest
@Calyst: The original dragoon leap strike was a bit redundant since we already had Diving Strike and Air Stunt, so it was removed. That being said, reading over the language of diving strike I see a language hitch in that combination, but we can update that before going to print.
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Re: [Drop Dead Studios] Spheres of Might Open Playtest
Now that SoM is released, should questions about it go here or the Spheres of Power Ask Me Anything #2 thread? Both seem wrong (because it's not in playtest anymore, but it's also definitely not Spheres of Power by definition) but at the same time a new separate thread seems like it might be overkill.
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Re: [Drop Dead Studios] Spheres of Might Open Playtest
Quote:
Originally Posted by
AlienFromBeyond
Now that SoM is released, should questions about it go here or the Spheres of Power Ask Me Anything #2 thread? Both seem wrong (because it's not in playtest anymore, but it's also definitely not Spheres of Power by definition) but at the same time a new separate thread seems like it might be overkill.
I'd probably say SoM needs its own thread, but that's more for my convenience.
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Re: [Drop Dead Studios] Spheres of Might Open Playtest
I think here works for now, though a fresh thread might be good eventually.
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Re: [Drop Dead Studios] Spheres of Might Open Playtest
I'd suggest, at the very least, editing the first post with an updated thread title.
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Re: [Drop Dead Studios] Spheres of Might
So, question about the addition to "Combat Training for Non-Spheres of Might Classes"
If Armorists trade out their Low-Caster spellcasting for Proficient combat training, can they still benefit from things like "Shadow Armory"? What about a Soaring Blade Armorist? Would they still gain their Telekinetic talents at full CL since they aren't a part of the casting feature?
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Re: [Drop Dead Studios] Spheres of Might Open Playtest
A few things I noticed:
- Having one of the unarmed spheres doesn't actually grant you similar benefits to the Improved Unarmed Strike feat. The unarmed combatants section in the introduction only talks about damage dealt. The other sensible place to put those benefits, the Unarmed Training talent in the Equipment sphere, doesn't have them either.
- The Alchemy conscript specialization 3rd level ability grants a non-benefit to poison users.
- The Hammer talent from the Brute sphere mentions the damage dealt by that talent being calculated in part using the practitioner's BAB, but doesn't say how.
Also, I'm happy that the option to trade in part or all of your standard feat progression for talents made it into the final product, but the adept progression feat loss really favors games that don't go past 11th level. Personally, I don't see why characters who take the adept progression have to lose the same feats as those who take the proficient progression. Having them lose the feats gained at 1st, 5th, 7th, 11th, 13th, 17th, and 19th level seems better to me.
You guys did awesome work, thanks.
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Re: [Drop Dead Studios] Spheres of Might Open Playtest
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Sam C.
Also, I'm happy that the option to trade in part or all of your standard feat progression for talents made it into the final product, but the adept progression feat loss really favors games that don't go past 11th level. Personally, I don't see why characters who take the adept progression have to lose the same feats as those who take the proficient progression. Having them lose the feats gained at 1st, 5th, 7th, 11th, 13th, 17th, and 19th level seems better to me.
You guys did awesome work, thanks.
From the original thread for this back in January:
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Mithril Leaf
Hey just wanted to chime in saying I'm excited for this book! I am concerned about two main things though. One is the Same accuracy is really bad. Two is that there seems to be no real reason to trade feats for proficient when adept has functionally the same cost, considering levels past twelve basically don't exist.
So it should be a known issue that people thought about already. And then decided to do anyway for what I'm sure is a well considered reason.
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Re: [Drop Dead Studios] Spheres of Might Open Playtest
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Originally Posted by
Mithril Leaf
So it should be a known issue that people thought about already. And then decided to do anyway for what I'm sure is a well considered reason.
I would like to hear that reason, assuming there was one.
Another potential issue: the Find Gap talent in the Scout sphere has a limited duration, triggered when (I assume) you first scout an enemy, which conflicts with the general scout rule stating that any talents tied to the scout ability can be used at any time in the next 24 hours.